


After All This Time

by sdmadridista



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Footy Ficathon, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 11:18:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3172420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sdmadridista/pseuds/sdmadridista
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Footy Ficathon Round Two:<br/>Still in love after all this time, across two continents and an ocean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After All This Time

He still watches all his matches. On a shitty stream, at an awkward hour, he watches the familiar shape run across a bright green pitch in an unfamiliar country. It’s far away, too far, across two continents and an ocean. It makes his heart ache and his breath constrict but he endures the pain because its all he’s got, that tiny pixelated figure in his screen. It’s not enough.

Since they were kids they were more than friends, since they were teenagers they were more than lovers. Theirs was a special bond, one that went bone deep. Even ‘soulmates’ seems too empty and cliche a term for what they meant to each other. The distance between them was wrong, like the sun refusing to shine, like never-ending darkness.

He’s back in Madrid after a short stint in Turkey but it feels different without his partner there with him. He’s training to be a coach so he can train kids on the Real Madrid youth squads, but when he see’s two boys - a long skinny blonde and a shorter dark brunette - laughing and joking on the pitch, arms slung around each other, he feels a pang of sadness that defines him these days. Real Madrid is an institute he’s dedicated basically his entire life to, yet it feels empty and desolate when the ‘eterno capitán’ is off in the middle east playing for a paycheck.

It’s the night before his first match as assistant manager and he should be home studying tactics but instead he’s holed up in a dark secluded bar, nursing a drink and missing him.

“I knew I’d find you here.”

He knows that voice, hears it in his dreams and for a second he wonders if he’s dreaming right now, because why would he be here, whispering in his ear, making the hairs in the back of his neck stand up.

“You didn’t think I’d miss your first match do you?”

And it’s not a dream, he swivels on his barstool and comes face to face with him and when their eyes meet it feels like his heart stops beating. When he smiles at him he releases a breath he didn’t know he was holding and his heart restarts, goes into overdrive at the way his eyes crinkle at the edges and the way his lips stretch into a wide smile. And all the pain and agony of missing him disappears in that second.

“Let’s go home José María.”

When they’re together it’s as if no time has passed, like they aren’t growing old without the other by their side. It’s easy, comfortable, perfect. They hold each other tight, unwilling to break the skin on skin contact they’ve craved like a drug. And when they finally come together, the stars align before exploding in the sky. Distance can’t destroy or even dull a love like this, can’t pull apart two souls so deeply entwined.

He knows he has to leave the next day, but for tonight, he’s here. After all this time, that’s all that matters.


End file.
